


Reinvention

by 7thweasley



Category: Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
Genre: Bearded Harry Potter!!!!, Character Study, Dealing with PTSD, POC Harry Potter, POC James Potter, Post Hogwarts, Relationship is really more of the beginning of a friendship, Second Wizarding War, can definitely be read as platonic, poc Sirius Black
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 00:12:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14943974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7thweasley/pseuds/7thweasley
Summary: After the war, Harry falls into a deep depression. After encountering Malfoy at a Muggle pub, he realizes that the two of them have more in common than he thought. Therefore he feels comfortable (and drunk) enough to explain his most recent crises.





	Reinvention

**Author's Note:**

> So basically this is a study of Harry Potter after the war. In addition to closing in on himself, he has grown his hair long and grown a beard, though he won’t tell anyone the real reason.

When asked why he had chosen to grow out his hair and beard, Harry Potter would usually give nonchalant answers like, “just trying something new”, or “Muggles are doing it nowadays”. His friends had to admit that it was a good look on him - it made Harry appear rugged and wise in a way that seemed to reflect everything the war had put him through. However, after knowing him for eight years, Ron and Hermione could tell when he was lying, or at least not telling the whole truth. His eyes would dart away from their face, and he would rub his shoulders or back. Therefore, Ron and Hermione knew that Harry’s simple answers weren’t the full of it, but they didn’t press the issue. Then again, his new fragility had started to show through in many ways.

Harry had been having a rough couple months now that he didn’t have an entire existence of people depending on him to defeat an oppressive entity. He was restless and impulsive, so it was no surprise that his Auror training was brief and that his relationship with Ginny Weasley was even briefer. Without a job or task to occupy his time, Harry rattled about Grimmauld Place. Though busy with their work, Ron and Hermione made an effort to stop by the flat often and visit with their practically reclusive friend. 

Their most recent visit had been to inform Harry of their engagement to be married. Though, as they explained to him, they hadn’t been dating for very long, they both recognized that this was how they want to spend the rest of their life - together. Harry was shocked (Hermione never did anything that could be seen as impulsive), but he couldn’t argue with them. They completed each other, therefore he was happy for them. 

He could not, nor would not, let the pair know how much their joyous news distressed him. When the war ended, Harry had begun to feel that he slipped from the lives of many people. It wasn’t that he missed the attention (he never reveled in his notoriety), but instead he felt that he no longer was needed. In his mind, Ron and Hermione marrying meant that he was now insignificant; a footnote in their story.

It was for this reason that Harry drew even further back into himself. When his friends or the Weasleys owled to arrange visits, he would say that he was busy. Lazily rifling through the multitude of cursed and ancient objects that previously belonged to the Black Family could hardly be called “busy”, but they didn’t need to know that.

Among these newfound feelings of uselessness, Harry couldn’t sleep. Part of it was due to his frequent and vivid nightmares. He often awoke, covered in sweat, with visions of glassy dead eyes that had once belonged to beloved people so full of life burned into his memory. The other part of his insomnia might be blamed on Grimmauld Place itself. Every room he wandered into reminded him of things. The room at the very top of the stairs had been his godfather’s, and Harry could not bring himself to deconstruct the decorations that so clearly exhibited Sirius’ personality. The bedroom at the end of the hall on the third floor had temporarily housed the Weasley twins, and Harry blamed himself for Fred’s death. Above all else, Sirius and Remus had moved an incredibly number of photo boxes into the flat when they lived there. These snapshots were frozen in time, but Harry’s mind and memories went on and on.

In fact, it was this listlessness that gave reason for Harry to be at the nearby Muggle pub late one night. He stumbled into the dingy room. His long hair was still in the messy French braid that he had seen his mother wear in a picture in Sirius’ room and tried to replicate. He had to admit that he was impressed with his initial attempt; it had only taken several hair-taming spells to make his curly, unruly, dark hair resemble his mother’s straight and sleek hair. 

Had he known that he would find company in the dreary bar, he probably would have pulled his hair back into the loose bun that it had usually been in so as not to appear so flashy.

“Harry Potter.” His first name sounded odd in the cool, even tone of Draco Malfoy. He said it more of a statement, rather than a question.

Harry let his gaze wander from the glass in front of him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the recognizable platinum blond pull out the stool next to him.

“If you’ve come to taunt me, save yourself the time. I am most definitely not in the mood,” Harry said, motioning to the bartender for a refill.

“You’re out of luck, Potter. I haven’t been feeling particularly spiteful lately.” Malfoy ordered a martini and made himself comfortable besides Harry.

“Damn, you must not be feeling like yourself,” Harry slurred sarcastically. 

“I’ve changed, since Hogwarts.”

Harry grunted in disbelief.

“The war changed me, but you would know all about that, wouldn’t you, Potter?” 

Harry grunted again. He had come to the pub to drink himself to sleep - not have a conversation.

“What are you doing in Muggle Islington?” Malfoy asked, pulling the olives out of his drink and eating them one by one.

Harry rolled his eyes and propped his head up to look at his childhood enemy properly. “Are you going to speak this entire time?”

“Conversation is generally more bearable with more than one person responding.”

“What am I doing in Islington? What am I doing here? I’ll tell you. I’m living here in Islington. Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. The last standing testimony to the most horrid House of Black! That place is a nightmare. Boggarts in every nook and cranny. Portraits screaming that I’m an abomination and a failure. The usual, yeah?”

Now that Harry had started to talk, he couldn’t stop. When his friends would come around, he had to force himself to be polite. With Malfoy, he could be as bitter as he wanted.

“I had forgotten that Sirius Black left that to you. For all of my mother’s familial pride, I’ve never seen the place,” Malfoy replied casually, ignoring the sour taste in Harry’s words.

Harry shrugged, and downed the last of his scotch. “You’re on the tapestry, you know. It changes as you change. Bloody creepy, if you ask me.”

“Really?”

“Of course that interests you. You’ve always been vain in my opinion.” Harry thought for a moment. “Would you like to see it?”

Malfoy looked at him to see if he was serious. He seemed to be, so he nodded and finished his own drink.

“You’ll have to Apparate us there, though. I’m quite sloshed, actually,” Harry mumbled as he attempted to stand up.

“I had no idea,” Malfoy scoffed. He pulled Harry’s arm over his shoulder as the darker man almost took a head dive towards the counter.

The pair stumbled out of the bar into a private alley so that they might Apparate without being seen. Soon, they stood in the road of Grimmauld Place. 

Malfoy looked at the buildings in confusion. “I thought you said you lived at Number Twelve...”

Harry trudged towards the fence post between Numbers Eleven and Thirteen. He fumbled for his wand, before pulling it from an obscured pocket within his coat. He rapped it on the rounded wrought iron decoration.

To Malfoy’s astonishment, Numbers Eleven and Thirteen made way for a very sinister looking Number Twelve. Harry opened the front door, not bothering to make sure that Malfoy was following.

Though Malfoy would have preferred to look around, Harry marched straight for the study where the tapestry resided so he had no choice but to hurry after him. Once in the study, Harry threw himself into an armchair and snapped for Kreacher’s service. 

“Scotch,” he said once the house-elf appeared.

After Kreacher disappeared once more, Malfoy looked at Harry incredulously. “Harry Potter, ‘the Savior’, has a house-elf? I’m disappointed in you.”

“Kreacher isn’t a house-elf, he’s a nuisance at best. If he didn’t know so much, I would have released him a long time ago,” Harry muttered, unscrewing the bottle of scotch that Kreacher had produced and drank from it. “Drink?” he offered to Malfoy, who accepted it cautiously.

“‘Scylla & Siren’ scotch? Isn’t this incredibly expensive? Father owned a bottle; he never drank it,” Malfoy asked as he looked at the label before taking a swig.

Harry shrugged, and took the bottle that Malfoy handed back. “What can I say? I’m rich and irresponsible.”

“So I’ve noticed. The papers have a lot to say about that.”

“‘Heartbroken Harry Potter’, ‘Hero Harry Potter After the War,’ ‘Pathetic Potter’” Harry quotes monotonously.

“Well, are you?” Draco asked. The scotch was lowering his inhibitions more than he would admit.

“Am I what? Heartbroken? Pathetic?”

“Heartbroken.”

“Oh, about Ginny? Not in the slightest. Don’t get me wrong, she’s wonderful, but it wasn’t working.”

“Is that why you’re ‘Hermit Harry’?”

Harry passed the bottle back to Malfoy, and looked distantly at the tapestry instead of Malfoy’s face.

“Well, you said it, didn’t you? War changes everything.”

Malfoy didn’t know what to say to that. The two of them sat in silence for several moments.

“You want to see something? I got a tattoo,” Malfoy asked to break that silence as well as a barrier between the two of them.

On Malfoy’s pale forearm, where it once was marred by the ugly Dark Mark, instead was a beautiful swirling arrangement of daffodils. “After the trials, I wanted to cover up the Mark. To start over, remake myself so to speak. The flowers know another name - ‘narcissus’, like my mother. According to Greek myth, Narcissus was an obsessive mortal who wasted away watching his reflection. The gods planted these flowers in his place.”

Harry looked between the tattoo and Malfoy’s face, which now was pinked by a blush at such a personal confession. “It’s beautiful,” Harry breathed.

“Thank you.”

“I understand, though, you know,” Harry stuttered. “I understand about wanting to reinvent yourself.”

“Have any secret tattoos? The ‘Daily Prophet’ would pay me millions for that information,” Malfoy chuckled.

Harry cracked a small smile. “Nothing that permanent, no. It’s partially why I’ve grown out my hair.”

“Partially?” inquired Malfoy.

Harry ran his hand through his beard anxiously for a few moments before sighing. “I haven’t told anyone, but I guess the best time to speak it aloud is when I’m drunk on expensive scotch, right?” His laugh was harsh and bitter. 

“The Weasleys and everyone keep asking why the sudden change, and I keep giving them excuses, you know? How can I tell them, how can I make them understand that I have come to fear my reflection? I can’t bear to accidentally catch sight of myself in mirrors, in spoons, in glass, whatever it is.”

Harry paused for a moment, obviously exasperated. Malfoy waited for him to continue, and he did after another drink.

“Right after the war, when I first came to live here by myself, I found this box of photos. They were of my father, mostly, and his friends. They called themselves ‘the Marauders’.” Harry opened a drawer in the study’s desk as he said this, and brought out a few photos of the Marauders.

“I had always heard, of course,” he continued, “that I looked like my father, but I had only seen pictures of him when he was younger or older than I am now. But in this photo, he was my age. He was 18, and facing a war so much bigger than himself. I saw him, and I saw myself in him. And rather than take comfort in that like I had in the past, it made me nauseous. He died for me, Malfoy. Me! I was just barely over a year old, and my parents gave their lives to protect me. And here I am, having not only avenged their deaths almost twenty years too late, but also having caused so many others. I couldn’t stand seeing him and feeling all that every time I saw myself in a goddamn mirror. So I grew out my hair. That helped for a while. And then I came across this photo, taken after their seventh year. Look at it.”

Harry tossed the photo over to Malfoy. Four people, two of whom he recognized, sat peacefully by some lakeshore, smiling at whoever held the camera. He could tell right away, right in the middle was James Potter. He was slightly darker toned than Harry was, and his eyes were brown, but the short unruly hair and the crooked smile were the same. To the left of James was Sirius, with his long black hair pulled into a bun. Though Sirius’ skin was more sallow and his eyes were thinner than James’, there was no mistaking that the two boys were related. Abruptly, Malfoy understood what Harry was saying.

“You looked like Sirius, too,” he said quietly, still looking at the photo.

“Precisely. I began to see him in the mirror too. Another person who would still be alive if not for me.”

“So you grew a beard.”

“So I grew a beard,” Harry confirmed. He immediately felt relieved, and exhausted, as if this confession had lifted a burden off of his shoulders.

“You’re wrong, though, you know.”

“How do you figure?”

“While, yes, your father and Sirius died FOR you, they didn’t die BECAUSE of you. They made their choice, and they chose you. You cannot blame yourself for that. They knew the cost, it was their decision,” Malfoy said earnestly, standing as he spoke.

He knew all about guilt and its plagues. Though Harry and himself might have had their differences in school, he saw himself in the other boy. He didn’t want him to suffer in the same ways that he had.

Malfoy realized that it had been a few moments since had stopped talking. He looked over at Harry, only to see him fast asleep on the settee. Malfoy summoned a blanket for him; it was the first good sleep he had had for months, surely.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think, I’m always eager to find feedback. You can also find me on tumblr as tiny-ging.
> 
> Though it’s not really important, I personally headcanon James Potter to be of Indian descent, and Sirius Black to be Vietnamese. I figured though that since pureblood families like theirs intermarried so often, they’re bound to look alike.


End file.
